Updated Ubuntu to precise from oneiric on a Dell Inspirion Mini 10 (with an Intel HDA-Soundcard). I can't remember having any issues with the microphone. I didn't need it - I tried ekiga the first time in precise.
I couldn't hear any sound in the echo test of ekiga, so I switched to the "System Preferences" and looked for the microphone to boost it. Surprisingly, the microphone input was greyed out - I couldn't mute or unmute, i couldn't even move the volume-slider.

On the other hand: I could change the microphone-setting on console with alsamixer, so don't worry about that… :)

I just wanted to ask, how to get pulseaudio back to the known, comfortable behaviour. Some newbies won't know the trick to use alsamixer…